09-03-2021, 02:25 AM | #41 | ||
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Re: Magic of Middle Earth
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The Tough Guide to Fantasyland poked fun at this by saying that this can happen to wizards by accident. If they do it intentionally then there is no hope for them. There was a related joke inspired by Warcraft where a human and a female elf are undressing and at the end the Elf goes "Let me guess, all your intellect was in your clothes".
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09-03-2021, 07:31 AM | #42 | ||||
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Re: Magic of Middle Earth
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Tolkien was often in the business of giving "the real story behind myths." In this case, he is suggesting that our stories about wizards casting spells, carrying staffs, living in towers, using crystal balls COME FROM THE ISTARI, not the other way around. He does this on purpose. Our stories of wizards are just versions that have been corrupted from being handed down for millennia, and in the meantime we've been inventing new wizards that never existed. Quote:
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When Tolkien uses the word wizardry of the Elves of Nargothrond, he means magic. He absolutely does not use the word in its slang sense of great but mundane skill. |
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09-03-2021, 11:23 AM | #43 | |
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Re: Magic of Middle Earth
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"The word wizard comes from the Middle English word ‘wys’ meaning ‘wise’. In this sense, it first appeared in English in the early 15th century. As a word used to describe a man with magical powers, wizard did not start to be used until around 1550." - Macmillan Dictionary word of the day So, as I said, "wizard" originally meant something akin to 'great but mundane skill'. Though it picked up its 'user of magic' barely a century after coming into being.
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09-03-2021, 12:09 PM | #44 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Ronkonkoma, NY
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Re: Magic of Middle Earth
https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=wizard
"As a slang word meaning "excellent" it is recorded from 1922." Tolkien originally wrote the Nargothrond story in the nineteen teens, and revised it in the thirties and again in the fifties. I don't happen to know when the word wizard was included, but odds are this meaning of the word was pretty darn new when Tolkien wrote it. And it doesn't fit Tolkien's style AT ALL. So no, wizard meaning great skill is NOT archaic. Quote:
The word wizard originally referred to a philosopher or sage. Philosophy and magic were largely the same thing in Medieval thought. I think it's no coincidence that the distinction of "one who performs magic" started to be used smack dab in the middle of the Renaissance, when science began to distinguish itself from magic. And the word wizardry didn't appear until around 1575, shortly after the word wizard started to be used for someone who uses magic. It NEVER meant the use of mundane but great skill OR the use of great knowledge until the slang usage of the 1920s appeared. So to reiterate: The Silmarillion says that the Elves of Nargothrond use magic to deal with threats to themselves, because it says they use "wizardry." |
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09-03-2021, 08:18 PM | #45 |
Join Date: Sep 2019
Location: UK
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Re: Magic of Middle Earth
Since it looks as if the original sense of "wizard" was about the book-learning kind of "wisdom", it wouldn't really be a very good fit for describing great skill in hunting down trespassers, even if you ignore the thing about the word "wizardry" apparently not having been used for that.
I think "wizardry" is probably used a bit more carelessly in the Middle-earth books than "wizard", even once Tolkien decided that "wizard" was going to mean specifically the Five Istari. The definition he gave does say "magic of the kind popularly ascribed to wizards". In other words, definitely magic (whatever definition of "magic" you're using), but the user is not necessarily a wizard in the Istari sense, just doing the kind of magic wizards do - or possibly just a kind of magic that an uninformed hobbit might think is what wizards do.
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09-03-2021, 09:02 PM | #46 |
Join Date: Nov 2004
Location: Sydney, Australia
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Re: Magic of Middle Earth
On the word "wizard", this is an interesting side note:
https://books.google.com/ngrams/grap...sensitive=true Also interesting that the use of the word was picking up ahead of 1997 (first publication of Harry Potter). My conjecture is that the rise of D&D in the 80s, and associated fantasy fiction, drove it (but I haven't researched to check). The publication of The Hobbit (1937) and The Lord of the Rings (1954) do not seem to have had any appreciable increase in overall usage in literature (which is a little surprising, but again I haven't delved into it to understand why that might be).
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09-03-2021, 09:35 PM | #47 |
Join Date: Aug 2007
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Re: Magic of Middle Earth
There wasn't enough fantasy literature before the 60s to be influential on. Much o the early 60s stuff was influenced by Conan more than anything. Mass LOTR influence came after the hippies of the late 60s took to it.
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09-04-2021, 11:24 AM | #48 | |
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Re: Magic of Middle Earth
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09-04-2021, 01:02 PM | #49 |
Join Date: Oct 2015
Location: New England
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Re: Magic of Middle Earth
Music (including song) is absolutely central to magic in Middle Earth. One example is the battle using songs of power in the tale of Luthien and Beren--perhaps the most overt description of spell casting in the stories (well, to my memory, anyway). One could argue (and I'm nearly certain I've read or heard Tolkien scholars say this) that Gandalf's hunches about the importance of Hobbits and Gollum were because he partially remembered the strain of music representing them in the Music of the Ainur.
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09-04-2021, 04:27 PM | #50 |
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: Denver, CO
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Re: Magic of Middle Earth
I've just gotta say that any Tolkien thread going into serious linguistic analysis warms my heart. And would 100% make him proud.
So, as far a Wizards go, I think we need to differentiate between Wizards and wizards. Just like the difference between Men and men. The Wizards are those Maiar who were assigned specific tasks by the Valar. On the other hand, anyone can be a wizard at a given task. Just like women, such as Eowen, can be of the race of Men. |
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